Treatment For Procrastination

Habitual procrastination can feel like a physical affliction, especially if your personal life and career are already suffering from your inability to take care of your responsibilities in a timely manner. Procrastination, like a true disease, doesn’t begin as a severe condition.

Often, procrastination starts off with only a few symptoms: you start feeling like you want to skip meetings so you can do something else, you ignore repeated requests to do something for a few days (but you eventually do come through, though very grudgingly), and you also begin feeling that everyone else is making too many demands of your time and energy.

Eventually, you start believing all the fantasies about being overworked or being pressured too much, and you start to fall back on your responsibilities and tasks. In the beginning, you feel powerful because you were able to “take control” of your time. You start doing things that aren’t really productive, even though you have deadlines and people are counting on you to get things done.

People will then begin to notice that you are no longer interested in accomplishing your tasks and responsibilities. That’s when the real problems emerge. You realize that your inaction is affecting others. However, you are unable to separate yourself from this new identity that you have created for yourself.

Is there a “treatment” for this disease that affects your ability to handle important responsibilities? Fortunately, there are many solutions available: you only have to be willing to address your condition, and work on it consistently, so that you will eventually experience remission.

Are you ready to cure yourself of procrastination? I prescribe one dose of each of these powerful cures every time you have trouble focusing and accomplishing the things that you have to do:

Procrastination is a habit.
That means your mind will try to enforce this habit, even if it doesn’t have any logical precedence at all. Keep this in mind when you feel like putting off something important. All those negative thoughts and emotions are a result of your habit, and nothing more. Nothing bad will happen if you start doing things in a timelier manner again!

Time is money.
Your time is just as precious as your manager’s, or boss’, time. Don’t think for a second that your time has a lower value just because you work for someone else.
The only thing that will affect the value of your time is your own actions. If you work on something important, your time becomes valuable. If you choose to put it off (again), your time’s value goes down significantly, because you choose not to be productive.

Always create a work timeline.
Do not allow yourself to flounder and fail just because you did not plan ahead. If you are going to perform a series of tasks that are time-intensive, you need to map out how many hours per day you can work uninterrupted on these tasks. After creating a timeline, don’t forget to reward yourself.

Think of people that have absolutely no problems in accomplishing what they need to accomplish.
Think of their habits and traits. Use these people as models, and try to think of other ways to make yourself excel at what you are presently doing.